


3 Laws of (E)motion

by waterfallliam



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Kissing, M/M, Mentions of alcohol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7684012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterfallliam/pseuds/waterfallliam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The application of a force to a body results in motion. Newton becomes an unstoppable force in Hermann's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3 Laws of (E)motion

**Author's Note:**

> There are probably a lot of fics like this (using Isaac Newton's three laws of motion) but I thought I’d add my take on it to the mix :) I took the liberty of paraphrasing the laws myself so that the idea as I understand it behind them (since I am not good at physics I could be wrong) is clear within the context of the fic. Obviously they are for motion, not emotions, but since I ‘applied’ them to Newt and Hermann I thought the pun was justified. I wrote this to procrastinate the fic I'm working on to procrastinate school work that needs to be done (I know). Translations: ernsthaft=serious(ly) and scheisse=shit. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy!

**1) Unless acted upon by a force, equilibrium will be upheld.**

 

Routine was the heartbeat of Hermann’s life. In 2013, it was disrupted by the first ever Kaiju attack. Ceaseless news footage in the first few weeks, hysteric internet forums in the next few months and yet no one seemed too worried about it happening again. The first attack also caused a much more significant disruption: a letter from Doctor Newton Geiszler.

_“Dear Doctor Gottlieb, I am writing to you because humanity’s future could be at stake.”_

It had sat in Hermann’s letterbox for three days before he had discovered it, distracted from paying his bills on time by the alien monster that had roamed the earth. As it was, the letter helped soothe his mind far more than Hermann would have thought possible. It touched upon Dr Geiszler’s concerns about the Kaiju and how the respective authorities were decidedly not handling it as well as they could.

_“You see, the whole scientific community is in uproar, but your voice stands out like a voice of reason. We don’t just need to know how to fight and kill these creatures, these Kaiju, we need to learn more about them and where they came from.”_

Looking back, Hermann often thought Newt’s first letter to him was the most articulate one, which led him to believe that he’d put great effort into it. Which was flattering, but not so much considering they were both driven not only by personal interest and scientific curiosity, but also the knowledge that the word apocalypse could soon stop being an exaggeration for the situation they found themselves in. They had both recognised that and had felt the intense need to do something about it.

_“At the moment none of these assholes seems to be coming up with any bright ideas or money for research. Maybe we stand a better chance if we work together. Someone has to figure it out and save the world, don’t they?”_

Whatever it was. Though at the time they had no way of knowing there would be a second attack (only a strong notion) their concerns were valid and the risk was real. Hermann had to agree: there was work to be done.

_“I can’t believe it came from the ocean. I thought aliens and monsters were supposed to come from the sky. How did it get there?”_

And so Hermann had changed his routine. He replied to Newt’s letters speedily after receiving them, he set aside time to research anything he thought relevant to the looming danger and kept up to date with any news regarding the PPDC.

_“I read your paper on the wormhole theory. It took some effort to understand the maths (sort of), but what about travelling through it? You didn’t mention that at all. Anyway, how do the Kaiju even get to travelling through the wormhole? It can’t be coincidental because their targeting of heavily populated cities isn’t.”_

Brilliant at mathematics and computer science as he was, Hermann was invited (urged) to help program the giant robots humanity was building to save themselves. When Hermann had first heard the idea he had laughed. Later, he had got drunk. In the morning he had a aching hangover and a reassuring letter from Newt waiting for him, his written babbling pointing out the advantages to giant robots. It comforted Hermann as he, of course, started to help. Whatever humanity was going to do to fight, he should be a part of it. He should help make it work, help them win.

_“Giant robots, Hermann! Imagine it. We’ll finally be their size. And with advanced weaponry we won’t need to blow them to bits! Finally some lucky guy will be able to get their hands on some proper samples. I wish it was me. It would be so much better than teaching.”_

Two years after the first attack it seemed inevitable to him that he would join the Jaeger academy. Goodbye to his apartment stuffed full of books and his study with his favourite chalkboard, goodbye to his comfortable bed. The Kaiju were coming to earth and they weren’t going away, so what did it matter where Hermann went, as long as it was to stop them.

_“I’m joining as well. MIT is boring, anyway. I want to get one of them tattooed on me. I want to know what Kaiju blue smells like. I want to meet you, Hermann.”_

Newt had started to call him Hermann and, surprisingly, it didn’t bother him. Newt was bothered that Hermann wouldn’t call him Newt and could count the occasions he’d called him Newton on his hands. So when Hermann was tired of talking to people who didn’t understand (the science, why he was there, him) he wrote back, agreeing to meet. He was nervous. Before Newton, he wouldn’t say he’d had a real friend, someone he could actually talk to.

_“This is the last letter I’m ever going to write to you, I’m feeling nostalgic. I’ve seen photos of you, but they’re all old. You’ll definitely recognise me, I stand out. I hope I don’t dissapoint. I can hardly imagine how you could.”_

But he did. They both did. Any equilibrium Hermann had found since the world had been shaken faded away. All he was left with was his intelligence, the steady clack of his cane, pain and the knowledge that numbers held the answers he so desperately sought.

  


**2) The force applied proportionally determines acceleration.**

 

Hermann threw himself into his work, but it wasn’t the same. He had lost his calm, he had lost his colleague (his friend). He saw him from time to time at fundraisers or conferences, but they never spoke. Hermann was ashamed to admit that he avoided him. It was three years later, in 2020, when Hermann spoke to Newt again. It was unavoidable. They were supposed to share a lab in Hong Kong. It was unacceptable.

_“Long time no see, Hermann! Guess we’re going to have to learn to work together afterall. I see your fashion sense remains unchanged. Hey, you like metal?”_

Newt’s metal music was only the start of it. Working with Newt became an incessant stream of disruptions and distractions. For some reason all of his complaints were ignored. Hermann had gone to check to see if Human Resources had received them and they had - they just wouldn’t do anything about it. It seemed they were stuck together.

_“Tape? A line - my half and your half? Hermann, ernsthaft?”_

Newt was infuriating and obnoxious and his babbling and ranting shouldn’t be so cute when it wasn’t written on paper and the smudges translated as bit so of Kaiju flung across the room and chemicals spilled everywhere they shouldn’t be. The fact that Newt was brilliant was undeniable, his attitude was juvenile at its worst, but his moral compass pointed true. His clothes all seemed to be a size too small and he worked himself too hard and he kept pushing all of Hermann’s buttons, kept pushing him to do better.

_“Oh and what, you think maths alone is going to save us? No, we have to understand them. Where they came from, how they came to be, what they want.”_

Hermann wished he understood Newt better. Sometimes he wished he didn’t understand him at all.

_“So, when - and I mean when - this is all over, do you think we’ll have caught a live one? Like for research and study. I guess in the future they’d have enough DNA to clone a whole one, but will I be alive then? I just want to see one.”_

Hermann’s worst nightmare was a Kaiju up close. Hermann’s worst nightmare was being eaten alive, being burnt by acid, by fire - it was being killed by this damned war before he’d figured it out. Newt helped him, kept him on track. Not that Hermann would admit it to anyone but himself. Just like he wouldn’t admit that his old infatuation with Newt had never died. Hermann had always told himself that as long as they never met, he couldn’t fall in love, not really. But it hadn’t worked. They had met and it had been horrible and Hermann had already fallen in love somewhere after the third letter and hadn’t stopped loving Newt since.

_“Why do you like chalk, anyway? I get the working non digitally part, but why chalkboards? Whiteboards would be so much… less messy. And you’re always so anal about mess.”_

Hermann didn’t mind the chalk dust. In fact, he liked it. It was proof he’d worked, it was familiar (back then it had been his favourite thing, hours with the chalkboard and maths that made sense, beautiful sense). It’s wasn’t mess the same way the dead skin a person shed wasn’t mess. It was easy to clean and a natural byproduct of life (of the work that was his life).

_“You want some of this? It’s good. I got your favourite.”_

Sometimes Hermann wished he could hate Newt in all the ways he pretended he did. Then he wouldn’t feel his affection twist twisting away at his gut every hour of every day.

_“Kaiju groupie, that’s a new one.”_

What would Newt do once the war ended? They were going to win the war, but what would Hermann do then? What would any of them do then? Not that it mattered if they didn’t win. They had to win.

_“I can’t believe we’ll be the only ones left. I mean, I know we’re that good but… how can they stop the program? The wall is fucking doomed to fail!”_

At least that was another thing they could agree on. Newt valued human life over Kaiju life, the sobering fact whenever his enthusiasm took him too far.

_“What’s wrong with this one? It’s awesome!”_

Hermann really did hate the tattoos, even if he loved how happy they made Newt.

“ _Why can’t you just unwind for once, is that too much to ask? Just take that scheiss stick you shoved up your ass and pull it out, huh, could you do me that solid? Just for one day, could you just let me be?”_

For once, Hermann didn’t offer a scathing retort.

_“Did you even go to bed last night, Hermann? It’s the third day in a row.”_

Hermann thought Newt might not notice amongst the new specimens. He had already mapped out the wormhole a hundred times, had calculated the probabilities of possible attacks, of the damage. Hermann thought he knew what the problem with his calculations were, but he didn’t. He didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t yet. Until he did. He solved it. Then he had a predictive model: the countdown to their last stand. Do or die.

_“Look! They didn’t evolve, they were grown. This changes everything! You see, there’s intelligent, technologically advanced, thought behind this. And they have a plan. A plan for us, I mean. And we don’t come out as the winners. We’re the vermin to be crushed.”_

The idea was frightening, but nowhere near as frightening as Newt hooking his brain, his brain where he lived, up to one of those monstrosities again. He wouldn’t survive it. Even if he did, what could he possibly gleam? They had the plan. They had the bomb. What would Hermann do if they won the war but Newt was dead?

_“I mean… you’d do that with me?”_

  


**3) Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.**

 

They won the war. They’d won, they’d won, they’d won… it was a mantra in Hermann’s head. A comfort, a victory cry, a record on repeat. Some things probably still had to sink in. What he’d seen, what he’d shown Newt. They’d finally crashed together, meeting again and again and now they’d maybe, finally, met.

There hadn’t been any doubt in his mind about their drift compatibility. He hadn’t had time for doubt about what this would mean considering his feelings. But as he had said, with death and destruction the only other sure alternative, Hermann would find a way to deal with it, whatever the fallout.

“It’s quieter now,” Newt said.

Hermann knew he wasn’t talking about the noise from the party. He sat down next to Newt so that their thighs and arms were touching. It was soothing. “Yes.”

Newt seemed to be too tired for theories about what he’d seen in the drift, what the drift had meant, what it had done to them, what it would mean, how it was different. How they were different. (What had they done to the Kaiju?)

“It doesn’t seem real.”

The world hadn’t seemed completely real in years. What Hermann had seen in the drift hadn’t seen completely real either. Newt, however, was glowing in technicolour, realer than real.

“This better seem real.” Hermann reached over, cupped Newt’s jaw and leant in for a kiss. Newt’s lips surged forward to meet his.

It was warmth, it was comfort, it was like joy Hermann had almost forgotten. For a moment he let go of the war they had fought, of the world around them. He had tunnel vision; all that mattered was that he closed his eyes and felt Newt against him.

“Better than real,” Newt muttered between kisses, starling a laugh from Hermann.

After a while they slowed down, the tiredness sinking in. They had time now, after all. Forehead against forehead they sat there, breathing in tandem until Hermann’s leg signalled it was time to get up.

They parted, went to bed. Tomorrow they would begin living in the aftermath, in what came next. Peace usually followed war. Hermann hoped they wouldn’t see war again in the long lives he wanted them to live.

In the months after the end, after the beginning, they fell together again and again in new ways. Newt started holding Hermann’s free hand in their rooms, in corridors, under the table during meetings. Hermann suggested they move in together when they were kicked out of the shatterdome. Newt made coffee just the way Hermann liked it early in the morning in nothing but one of his jumpers. Hermann loved Newt’s tattoos and didn’t stop using analogies.

“You think it will ever fade?” Newt pointed at the ring of blood around his eye. It had been almost a year now.

“I don’t think so. But at least we match,” Hermann smiled.

They fell together again, lips against lips, hands on hips. They fell into bed together. They had fallen into a new routine together. They kept on falling in love with each other. Again and again and again.


End file.
